


Green and growing things

by JoCarthage



Series: Long distances and close calls (2020 phone banking accountability fic series) [14]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Gardens & Gardening, M/M, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27382042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoCarthage/pseuds/JoCarthage
Summary: Alex and Michael talk about plants and gardening and kids.--This fic is the last in a series where, after each day of phone banking for the democratic ticket in the US's 2020 presidential election, I wrote a fic that's 10x the number of calls I made. So if I make 14 calls, I write and post a 140 word fic. If I made 72 calls, 720 words. There may be opportunities to volunteer helping voters cure their ballots if they're rejected during the counting process. Check: https://joebiden.com.As a gentle reminder to those of you who, like me, feel like there's a fist clenching your lungs tonight, we don't expect the final results of the counts in many key states for several days.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Series: Long distances and close calls (2020 phone banking accountability fic series) [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1970539
Comments: 24
Kudos: 61





	Green and growing things

**Author's Note:**

> I called 101 people in Florida, 24 people in North Carolina, and 84 more in Michigan today, for a total of 1600 calls total. I thought I'd finished this series after my 1001st call, but it turns out phone banking was holding back the tide of election worrying, so after taking 2 days to handle my other volunteer commitments, I am back at it.
> 
> If we win, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave will be the address Donald Trump will soon be leaving, so it seemed a good number to stop on.
> 
> Also, this is a bit of a meandering weird one, friends. Like most of you, I'm in a weird mood tonight and it showed in the writing. But I wanted to finish this series.

Greg knelt beside the patch of earth, Alex and Michael on either side of him. In front of them, two dozen 4th graders sat in the dirt and watched.

"We'll plant the corn first," Greg said, pressing his finger deep into the well-watered soil to place a single kernel of blue corn. "Why?"

A little girl with her hair tied back in colorful ribbons said without raising her hand: "It provides the structure."

Greg nodded. "And then?"

Michael leaned forward, dropping a single sunflower seed in alternating holes around the same circle.

A little boy called out from the back: "Then the sunflowers, the 4th sister."

"And what do they bring?"

He frowned a little, and then recited: "Structure, like the corn, and, something else --"

The little girl interrupted, jostling the boy's shoulder. "They attract the pollinators too."

Greg nodded, moving to a larger circle of holes around where the sunflower seeds glimmered black. "And we remember, what do living things need?"

The students chorused: "Food, shelter, water --"

"And care," Greg said. "Particularly when they're small. Particularly when they're growing. It's possible to transplant adult plants to healthy soil, to give them what they need to grow up stronger than their home soil let them grow." He didn't glance to either side, but Alex and Michael knew he was thinking of them. Greg smiled at the kids: "But it's better to give seeds the best start you can, if you can."

He reached over to a pile of pale, thumbnail-sized seeds. "That's where the squash comes in."

He turned to where Alex knelt beside him: "Alex, what does the squash provide?"

Alex set a seed in each hole in the outer circle, saying: "They provide shelter. A low growing plant, it gives fruit that is good for roasting or sometimes eating raw or making musical instruments. But most important to the other plants around it, its large, thick leaves provide shade, keep the soil around everyone else moist, protect the seedlings from predators."

"Did Alex get everything right?"

There was a bobbling of heads.

"And, finally, the beans," Greg continued, standing and dusting off his knees, gesturing for the kids to stand as well and begin to come forward. Each held a single bean in their small hands, and each dropped their tiny loads into the two-dozen holes the three adults had poked in the outermost circle. "They provide food on the vine, but more importantly, they provide food through the winter. A single person needs a lot of beans to get enough protein, so we'll plant a lot more of them than the others. Who can tell me about beans?"

A round-faced girl raised her empty hand and Greg nodded to her as the others kept planting. She ticked off her ideas on her fingers as she spoke: "Beans are the weakest of the plants -- they need the others to grow-up and for shade; they provide the most to the soil, since they're, um," she worked her hands over each other and then found the phrase, "nitrogen fixers. They're why Diné don't need fertilizer. Because they bring nitrogen into the soil and keep it there." She took a breath. "The flowers use the pollinators the sunflowers bring in -- and so do the squash and the corn. The beans can be stored for a long time, and are both seeds and food."

"Very good," Greg smiled. The last of his students were finishing planting.

"Alright," he said. "Now, we're going to cover all of these seeds with dirt, then cover the dirt with pebbles --" one of the girls was bouncing on her heels, her hand up.

"Yes, Tracy?"

"Lithic mulch!" She said, eyes bright.

Greg nodded: "Yep, that's what it's called. That will keep the water under the ground for longer, keep it from evaporating. So, everyone with a birthday between January and March can get the hose, everyone with a birthday between March and October can get the bags of pebbles, and everyone with a birthday in November or December can help me cover the seeds." 

The kids split into groups as Alex murmured: "I need to try that sorting trick with my team."

Greg gave him a half-smile as they stood and got out of the way, watching the kids have the fun: "I don't know, I think these kids might be better at following rules than most airmen I know." Alex chuckled and Greg gave him a bigger smile before going to help the students open the bags of pebbles.

Alex glanced over at Michael, voice low as they walked to stand in the shade of a ramada: "Was this what you were hoping for, when you went to Sante Fe, got those seeds? That you'd produce enough seed corn for Greg's whole class?"

Michael looked up, looked at the rows and rows of beds and ramadas. Beds he and Alex had built together, on weekends and holidays, in between visits to Alex's family on the rez, pow wows where Michael sat in the stands and Greg walked Alex around. Long, long drives where they'd talked, not talked, gone over things Michael had never thought they'd talk about again.

He looked at what they'd built and shook his head. "Back when I first started, I thought it would be a one-off thing, something small. But," and his face moved a little, "I realized, the thing about plants is, they grow. They keep growing. You can stop tending them and they might die, they might survive, but they -- they don't _pause_. Even if they don't bear fruit this round, the work done to grow them, that is work that lasts. Growing living things create their own forward momentum."

"It's hard to remember sometimes," Alex said, watching the students carefully layer the pebbles with the other group waiting with the hose, ready to soak the whole bed. Alex tried again: "It's hard to remember that time only moves forward. We," he took a breath, "we can spend so much time in the past, trying to understand it, trying to see how it touches us, _warps_ us, still, that it's easy to forget plants only grow; life only moves in one direction."

He eased his hand between them, brushing the back against Michael's. Michael looked down, watched as Alex looped his pinky around his, squeezing once before letting go. Alex kept speaking: "It's good to know the past, to understand it." He wasn't looking at the seeds, at the beds, the ramadas, the kids; he was looking at Michael. Just Michael. "But it's good to remember how big the future is too. How much of it there is to live in." 

And Michael nodded, throat catching a little. "It's a big future." He took a breath. "But it's not one we have to get through alone." He nodded out to the garden. "That's what I like about this. That everything has to rely on each other to survive. Mono-cultures, the way non-indigenous people grow corn, places where every living thing is identical?" He shuddered. "It's sick and sickening. But places where there's a mix, growing things and decomposing things, supports and things that need support, flowers and leaves and roots all giving what they can, doing what they're good at -- a big, messy mix, that's a healthy garden."

"I like that," Alex said. 

Greg called over to them, his students getting to work with popsicle sticks and pens they could use to label the circles in the beds: "Hey, you guys gonna help or are you going to let the kiddos do all the work?"

Alex glanced over at Michael with a grin and waited for his nod before calling back: "We're coming!"

\--

On the drive back, Alex tried to think through what he wanted to say. Time was, if he wanted to be close to Michael, to feel secure with him, he would just put his hand on Michael's arm, unbuckle his seatbelt and press his knee against his thigh, to let Michael know in the language they both spoke best what he could never seem to convey with words.

But he was trying -- they were trying -- to grow together this time. So somewhere north of Albuquerque he said: "I had a question and I'm not sure how to ask it."

Michael glanced over at him, lifting an eyebrow but giving him space.

"So, you know I watched the tapes, heard what you said to Jesse, when you were looking for me."

Michael's jaw tensed, but he kept his hands soft on the wheel. He nodded.

"You said you wanted a Dad band." Alex said, and some of the tension flowed out of Michael's shoulders. Alex let that sit, hoping Michael would pick-up the conversational thread. When he didn't, he forced himself not to deflect, to ask the question directly: "Did you mean it? That you wanted to have kids," he took a breath: "With me?"

He saw Michael blink quickly, like he was trying to hold something in. "I mean," Michael started, "you and Maria are the only people I've thought about having kids with. For a decade before she and I got together, you were the only one I'd ever considered." He shrugged one shoulder. "I figured, between the two of us, we knew every way a kid _shouldn't_ be raised, so if we could provide -- structure and shelter, food and water, resources and support, that's pretty much what all growing things need, right?" His voice was going for lightness, but Alex could hear how deep a need he was talking through.

He tried to honor that, match it with his tone: "And is -- if --" he took a breath, "is that something you think about still?"

Michael tipped his head to the side, giving Alex side-eye: "It takes two to metaphorically tango here, Alex. I'm not going to go day-dreaming about things that I'm not sure you're up for. I don't need to borrow trouble."

"You're the only one I've thought about it with, either." He was looking out at the red-grey hills, voice quiet. "When I'd let myself think about it, think about being a Dad in anything other than pure negative terms of, like you said, what _not_ to be, I thought about," and he rolled his head back on the low headrest. "I thought about you showing them your bunker, doing little experiments with them. Them roving around the junkyard, napping in the Airstream while you worked. I thought about Isobel spoiling them and Max giving them piggyback rides." He took a breath. "These weeks, months, seeing Greg every weekend, meeting his students it -- it reminded me how much kids are just little people. Little people with limited life experience, who need a chance to grow and be cared for. And yeah, that's a massive, real, huge responsibility." He took a steadying breath. "But so is undoing my family's legacy with Project Shepherd. So is building your brother a pacemaker. We take on big responsibilities all the time, together and apart, and," and here he tried to say what he'd meant to say, at the start: "You've been good with the kids on the rez. You treat them like people and are protective of them and answer their many, many, many questions. I'd," his voice was uneven now, "even if it wasn't us doing it together, I think you'd be a great Dad, Michael."

Michael reached over, slipping his hand down Alex's arm, inter-tangling their fingers on the cracked bench seat. His voice was low: "You know, the world's pretty fucked up. There's a lot of people out there saying nobody should be having kids right now."

Alex frowned. "One, it's not their fucking business what we do. Two, there are already kids who need homes and places to grow. And three," Alex rubbed his face with his free hand, "people -- people have kids in war zones. In famines. In plagues. If someone doesn't want kids, then they shouldn't have them. I 100% believe that. But if someone wants to have kids? Can care for them, love them, protect them? Then that's a _good_ thing."

He squeezed Michael's hand: "I'm not saying right now, obviously."

"Obviously," Michael repeated with a grin.

"But in the future? Yeah, I would want to."

Michael's hand was soft and warm in his when he answered: "In our future," he gave a hard breath. "I would love that with you."

The rest of the drive home was quiet, but Alex felt something thrumming under his breastbone.

Something like hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Top quotes from today's phone banking:
> 
> Rebecca (NC), who I mis-IDed as a Biden supporter. She'd said she sent in her absentee ballot this morning and I was trying to get her to call the voter hotline for North Carolina (833-868-3462) to get help seeing if it could still be counted: "Oh, but you probably don't want my vote counted. I voted for Trump."  
> Me: "I _do_ want all the votes counted."  
> Rebecca (NC): "Well, I'm not going to call anyone to fix this. So goodbye." Then she hangs up.
> 
> This was the call that helped me name something I kept hearing from Trump supporters I talked to -- so much projection. So much "I must protect myself from you doing unto me what I fully intended to do unto you."
> 
> And then another, much better call:  
> Eve (NC): "Yes, baby, I'm going to be voting in a few minutes. Don't worry about it."  
> Me: "Thank you! I'll let you go then."  
> Eve, laughing: "Goodbye!"


End file.
